Mark Bertolini, chairman and CEO of Aetna, said the company’s pending $69-billion acquisition of CVS Health will allow people to receive healthcare in their community, thereby keeping people healthier and decreasing costs.

CVS has more than 10,000 pharmacies across the country—many with healthcare clinics—and Bertolini sees the potential for these retail locations to become one-stop shops for preventive care, treatment, and prescriptions medication.

“In today’s environment, 60% of our life expectancy, which has gone down two years in a row, is associated with where we live,” said Bertolini (pictured above). “Thirty percent is our genetic code and 10% is the clinical care you receive. So now our zip code matters more than our genetic code and how long we live, and unless we get into the community, and we begin to provide services in the community that deal with issues like social isolation, food, water, accessibility, access—if we can do more of that in the community and near people’s homes, then we’re going to win because we’re going to keep people healthy around the issue that prevents them from living the life they want to lead.”

Bertolini added: “Call it 10,000 new front doors to the healthcare system. And what we want to do is provide as many services as we can in the community to meet social determinants, that 60% percent, versus waiting for people to show up in the healthcare system broken and fix them.”